The taller young people, instead of their former tasteless array, wore
delightfully pretty frocks and hats, and had other charming decorations
chosen for them. They began to love the memory of their dead mother.
What could she not have been to them if she had lived, when only a
step-mother was so sweet and so dear and so kind? And mamma had said to
them long before she had thought of marrying father, that their mother
would have greatly wished them to please their father's wife, and love
her if they could. Nothing was so natural as to do both, but it was
nice, to be sure, that she would have approved.
It was not long after John Mortimer and his wife returned from their
very short wedding tour that they had a letter from Valentine, and he
had spoken so confidently of his intended absence in the south of Europe
during the later autumn and the whole winter, that they were surprised
to find he had not yet started, and surprised also at the excessive
annoyance, the unreasonable annoyance he expressed at having been
detained to be a witness at some trial of no great importance.
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